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Posted on 03/13/2017 8:58:52 AM PDT by ebb tide
Two trials, two appeals to conscience.
Trial 1: I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.
Trial 2: If the number of bishops and universities should be so material as your lordship seems to think, then I see little cause, my lord, why that should make any change in my conscience. For I have no doubt that, though not in this realm, but of all those well learned bishops and virtuous men that are yet alive throughout Christendom, they are not fewer who are of my mind therein. But if I should speak of those who are already dead, of whom many are now holy saints in heaven, I am very sure it is the far greater part of them who, all the while they lived, thought in this case the way that I think now. And therefore am I not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom.
What is the difference of these two quotes?
The first, from the friar Martin Luther, asserts the primacy of conscience over the universal consent of the Church and the tradition.
The second, from a laymen Thomas More, notes the agreement of conscience to the faith of Christendom, the history of the Church, and the saints of Heaven.
Why are these appeals to conscience significant? I think Belloc is fundamentally correct in his assessment of the nature of Protestantism as a denial of religious authority, resting in a visible Church:
The Protestant attack differed from the rest especially in this characteristic, that its attack did not consist in the promulgation of a new doctrine or of a new authority, that it made no concerted attempt at creating a counter-Church, but had for its principle the denial of unity. It was an effort to promote that state of mind in which a “Church” in the old sense of the word-that is, an infallible, united, teaching body, a Person speaking with Divine authority-should be denied; not the doctrines it might happen to advance, but its very claim to advance them with unique authority.
The individual quickly emerged to fill the vacuum left by the Church, as the dominant religious factor in the modern period.
Martin Luther: Revolutionary, Not Reformer In this year of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, we have to take stock of the legacy of the renegade, Catholic priest, Martin Luther. What were his intentions? It is commonly alleged, even among Catholics, that he had the noble aim of reforming abuses within the Church.
In fact, Martin Luther discovered his revolutionary, theological positions about a year before he posted his 95 theses. Probably in the year 1516, while lecturing on Romans at the seminary in Wittenburg, Luther had a pivotal experience, which shaped the way he viewed the Christian faith. Essentially, his “tower experience,” resolved his difficulty of conscience. He saw God and His commandments as a moral threat:
But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn’t be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, “Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?” This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.
Reading Romans 1, while in the tower of his monastery, Luther suddenly saw the resolution of his troubled conscience through faith: “All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light.”
As we see in Trent’s teaching on justification and the Joint Declaration of Faith, there is nothing wrong with the realization that righteousness (same word as justification) comes through faith alone, moved by the grace of God. The problem is the re-reading of Scripture and all of the Christian tradition in a different light through this realization. Luther’s troubled conscience and experience of faith led him eventually (as it took him a while to work it out) to reject many of the Sacraments, books of the Bible, and the Church’s authority all in the name of liberty of conscience. A great schism would follow from Luther’s personal experience.
The Significance of Luther’s Teaching on Conscience No doubt reforms were needed in the Catholic Church in 1517. Contrary to popular opinion however, Luther primarily sought to spread his understanding of the Gospel, not to correct abuses. Catholic practices became abuses precisely because they contradicted his tower experience of 1516.
One of Luther’s early tracts, Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), lays out the implications of his view in more detail:
Besides, if we are all priests, as was said above, and all have one faith, one Gospel, one sacrament, why should we not also have the power to test and judge what is correct or incorrect in matters of faith? What becomes of the words of Paul in I Corinthians 2:15: “He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man,” II Corinthians 4:13: “We have all the same Spirit of faith”? Why, then, should not we perceive what squares with faith and what does not, as well as does an unbelieving pope?
All these and many other texts should make us bold and free, and we should not allow the Spirit of liberty, as Paul calls Him, to be frightened off by the fabrications of the popes, but we ought to go boldly forward to test all that they do or leave undone, according to our interpretation of the Scriptures, which rests on faith, and compel them to follow not their own interpretation, but the one that is better….
Thus I hope that the false, lying terror with which the Romans have this long time made our conscience timid and stupid, has been allayed.
Luther never condoned license (though he did condone Philip of Hesse’s bigamy), as he said his conscience was captive to the Word of God, but he did separate the decision of his conscience from the authority of the Church. This proved absolutely foundational for Protestantism and modern, religious experience.
Father of the Modern World The claim that Luther stands at a crucial moment between medieval Christendom and the modern world is not contentious. This is need for care, however. His separation of faith and reason and insistence on the spiritual nature of the Church, in my opinion, did quicken the advance to secularism. However, Luther did not directly intend the creation of the modern, secular world as know it. Yet his stand on conscience and his individualistic interpretation of faith did lend itself to modern individualism, which I would even say is the heart of modern culture.
Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that Luther stood at the forefront of the modern movement, focused on the freedom of the individual. I recommend looking at this piece, “Truth and Freedom” further, but his central insight on Luther follows:
There is no doubt that from the very outset freedom has been the defining theme of that epoch which we call modern…. Luther’s polemical writing [On the Freedom of the Christian] boldly struck up this theme in resounding tones…. At issue was the freedom of conscience vis-à-vis the authority of the Church, hence the most intimate of all human freedoms…. Even if it would not be right to speak of the individualism of the Reformation, the new importance of the individual and the shift in the relation between individual conscience and authority are nonetheless among its dominant traits (Communio 23 [1996]: 20).
These traits have survived and at times predominate our contemporary religious experience. The sociologist, Christian Smith, has noted in his study of the faith life of emerging adults, Souls in Transition, that an evangelical focus on individual salvation has been carried over into a new religious autonomy. He claims that…
the places where today’s emerging adults have taken that individualism in religion basically continues the cultural trajectory launched by Martin Luther five centuries ago and propelled along the way by subsequent development of evangelical individualism, through revivalism, evangelism and pietism…. Furthermore, the strong individualistic subjectivism in the emerging adult religious outlook—that “truth” should be decided by “what seems right” to individuals, based on their personal experience and feelings—also has deep cultural-structural roots in American evangelicalism.
Luther’s legacy clearly points toward individualism in religion, setting up a conflict with religious authority and tradition. The average Western Christian probably follows his central assertion that one must follow one’s own conscience over and against the Church.
Luther’s View of Conscience in the Catholic Church The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the Catholic Church entails whether the teachings of the Church are subordinate to one’s own conscience or whether conscience is bound by the teaching of the Church.
I know an elderly Salesian priest who told me with all sincerity that the purpose of Vatican II was to teach us that we could decide what to believe and how to live according to our conscience. This is clearly the “Spirit of Vatican II,” as Gaudium et Spes, while upholding the dignity of conscience, enjoins couples in regards to the transmission of life: “But in their manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel” (50). Dignitatis Humanae, Vatican’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, holds together two crucial points, stating that one cannot “be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience,” (3) as well as that “in the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church” (14). The Council upheld the dignity of conscience as well as its obligation to accept the authority of the Church.
The misinterpretation of the Council’s teaching on conscience as license found its first test case just three years after the Council closed in Humanae Vitae. Theologians such as Bernard Härring and Charles Curran advocated for the legitimacy of dissent from the encyclical on the grounds of conscience. The Canadian Bishops, in their Winnipeg Statement, affirmed: “In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assure that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”
Conscience also stands at the center of the current controversy over the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. I’ve already written on how Amoris stands in relation to the Church’s efforts to inculturate the modern world in relation to conscience. Cardinal Caffarra claimed that the fifth dubium on conscience was the most important. He stated further: “Here, for me, is the decisive clash between the vision of life that belongs to the Church (because it belongs to divine Revelation) and modernity’s conception of one’s own conscience.” Recently, the German bishops, following those of Malta, have decided: “We write that—in justified individual cases and after a longer process—there can be a decision of conscience on the side of the faithful to receive the Sacraments, a decision which must be respected.”
In light of the current controversy on conscience, it is troubling that Luther is now upheld as genuine reformer. The most troubling is from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in its Resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and throughout the year 2017: “Separating that which is polemical from the theological insights of the Reformation, Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognising him as a ‘witness to the gospel’ (From Conflict to Communion 29). And so after centuries of mutual condemnations and vilification, in 2017 Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.” The Vatican also announced a commemorative stamp (which to me sounds like the United States issuing a stamp commemorating the burning the White House by British troops).
Pope Francis has spoken of Luther several times in the past year, including in an inflight press conference returning from Armenia: “I think that the intentions of Martin Luther were not mistaken. He was a reformer. Perhaps some methods were not correct.” In response I ask, what did Luther reform? Francis pointed to two things in his journey to Sweden. The Reformation “helped give greater centrality to sacred scripture in the Church’s life,” but it did so by advocating the flawed notion of sola scriptura. Francis also pointed to Luther’s concept of sola gratia, which “reminds us that God always takes the initiative, prior to any human response, even as he seeks to awaken that response.” While the priority of God’s initiative is true and there are similarities to Catholic teaching in this teaching (that faith is a free gift that cannot be merited), Luther denied our cooperation with grace, our ability to grow in sanctification and merit, and that we fall from grace through mortal sin. Francis also noted, while speaking to an ecumenical delegation from Finland: “In this spirit, we recalled in Lund that the intention of Martin Luther 500 years ago was to renew the Church, not divide Her.” Most recently he spoke of how we now know “how to appreciate the spiritual and theological gifts that we have received from the Reformation.”
It is true that Martin Luther did not want to divide the Church. He wanted to reform the Church on his own terms, which was not genuine reform. Luther said he would follow the Pope if the Pope taught the pure Gospel of his conception: “The chief cause that I fell out with the pope was this: the pope boasted that he was the head of the Church, and condemned all that would not be under his power and authority; for he said, although Christ be the head of the Church, yet, notwithstanding, there must be a corporal head of the Church upon earth. With this I could have been content, had he but taught the gospel pure and clear, and not introduced human inventions and lies in its stead.” Further he accuses the corruption of conscience by listening to the Church as opposed to Scripture: “But the papists, against their own consciences, say, No; we must hear the Church.” This points us back to the crucial issue of authority, pointed out by Belloc.
Conclusion: More Over Luther We should not celebrate the Reformation, because we cannot celebrate the defense of erroneous conscience held up against the authority of the Church. As St. Thomas More rightly said in his “Dialogue on Conscience,” taken down by his daughter Meg: “But indeed, if on the other side a man would in a matter take away by himself upon his own mind alone, or with some few, or with never so many, against an evident truth appearing by the common faith of Christendom, this conscience is very damnable.” He may have had Luther in mind.
More did not stand on his own private interpretation of the faith, but rested firmly on the authority of Christendom and, as Chesterton put it, the democracy of the dead: “But go we now to them that are dead before, and that are I trust in heaven, I am sure that it is not the fewer part of them that all the time while they lived, thought in some of the things, the way that I think now.”
More is a crucial example of standing firm in a rightly formed conscience. We should remember why he died and not let his witness remain in vain. He stood on the ground of the Church’s timeless teaching, anchored in Scripture and the witness of the saints. If we divorce conscience from authority, we will end in moral chaos. As Cardinal Ratzinger asked in his lucid work, On Conscience: “Does God speak to men in a contradictory manner? Does He contradict Himself? Does He forbid one person, even to the point of martyrdom, to do something that He allows or even requires of another?” These are crucial questions we must face.
Rather than celebrating the defender of erroneous conscience, let’s remember and invoke the true martyr of conscience, who died upholding the unity of the faith.
While I disagree with Protestant antinomianism, I agree that it is illogical in the extreme to abolish an entire G-d-ordained legal, ritual, and ceremonial system and then to complain about Protestant antinomianism. If there truly is a legal/ritual/ceremonial system still in effect, it is the original one that came directly from the Mouth of G-d at Sinai . . . not some completely new one that "replaced" it (G-d forbid!).
Protestantism began with chrstianity itself. Too bad Catholic/Orthodox chrstians seem unable to grasp that fact.
“In other words you can’t explain how you’re attempting to use Scripture to justify your tagline. Got it.”
No. First of all, I didn’t attempt to use Scripture to justify my tagline. I used Scripture to justify my tagline. There was no attempt. There was only accomplishment. Second, I could explain further but I see no point in doing so for three reasons: 1) I’m not at your beck and call and that post wasn’t to you in the first place. 2) It’s obvious and no further explanation should be necessary. 3) I can only conclude that this is yet another example of an anti-Catholic’s line of questioning with no serious point but to endlessly post about a non-point in desperate search of something to attack a Catholic over. If this goes as it usually does, an anti-Catholic will either 1) keep posting endlessly about how I won’t reply to him in a way he wishes (and his posts will be ever increasingly plaintive ones) or 2) the anti-Catholic will pull the almost classic taking-my-ball-and-going-home nonsense.
I just assume post how I want to post, when I want to post, about what I want to post, and I don’t care if it bothers the anti-Catholic. All I have to do is follow the board rules, of course.
St. Paul writes, in Romans 3:28 “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.”
This is the verse to which Luther added the word “alone” after the word faith in his German translation. There is simply no basis in the Greek text for this translation and the addition seems arbitrary, if not intentional, to bolster his novel doctrine of sola fide.
Within a very short space of time, we quickly find our differences, magnify them and then let our egos go to work on each other.
These ensuing battles and our score cards become the fruit which we then offer up to the one we actually serve while in the heat of those moments.
We Christians argue over words, but are specifically told not to.
We Christians fight like Cains over the mantle of Abel, while cherishing the belief that the winner will be the rightful and rational heir to Abel's throne.
Note that I said "We".
I wish I could point my fingers at the worst offenders in these discussions and say it's "Them". My ego would love that! But, that would be a lie.
The truth is, in each and every discussion, the Holy Spirit, should I ever choose to listen to Him, is telling me to shut up and find Him in silence.
Boring...what fun is that? My ego would rather catch someone in a misstep, beat them into submission with it, and then win the argument for me and my team!
Unfortunately for my ego, Proverbs is a mirror that's loaded with advice for my ego, who of course is not at all interested unless the advice helps it "win the fight".
By their fruits, by their works, ye shall know them and the works of a rational ego are not the same as those of a believing, faithful Christian.
In fact, the ego will tell you its stuff is better! So...Fight! Fight!! Fight!!!
Of course ealgeone can rightfully respond to you on this. You are addressing that tagline insult to ealgeone as much as you are to everyone else. And ealgeone is correctly saying that you attempted to justify it through Scripture but haven’t done so. What’s more, you’ve not only made your tagline a personal attack on everyone who reads it, but you’re breaking the rules by calling an individual poster an “anti-Catholic.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/~religionmoderator/
If we are not saved by faith in Christ and only Christ how else does one achieve salvation? See Ephesians 2:8-9.
Wow. Just. Wow.
Self certainly can be a part of these conversations, leading to what the Bible describes in so many words as vain competition and making another person one’s enemy to be defeated, rather than seeing them as someone being held captive to error and who might be counselled to recognize the truth.
On the other hand, even in the time of the Apostles, false teaching was being put out by professing Christians, as the Lord Himself warned would happen, and the Apostles strove to expose it and the false teachers in no uncertain terms, even using condemning language. Two thousands years on means two thousands years of interpretation, Christians living out their faith, and of invention, including false invention. Christians shouldn’t believe that those who oppose them somehow in belief or interpretation are necessarily enemies to be defeated, or deliberate false teachers. Someone could even have a point. But it is important to have these discussions, which is essentially teaching, to counter false teaching.
The danger here is not recognizing that it could be Me, my Self and I who is in error.
The real danger is that it's not the other person who is being held captive to error, but rather it is me who is not only held captive in error, but has then added condemnation by my hypocrisy, which the Holy Spirit would show me if my ego would get out of the way.
I would see this in others, but would somehow think I was clean and pure and right. What a hoot!
Fact is,
You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.Instead,
--Obi-Wan Kenobi
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.But we don't, which is why there are so many versions of Him.
Proverbs 3:5
Whatever was in his heart, Luther opened the doors to whatever version we each like best.
Personally, I think we're all in for quite a surprise.
There is only one version of Christ....right? He doesn’t change.
It is we humans who have field dressed Him and put the pieces we like best into individual boxes of our own design.
It's our way. It's in our nature, especially now in our times.
Inevitably, it's how we've written our times' part of the ongoing story we were born into.
Now we are stuck here fighting in this mosh pit of our righteous division, waiting for the Referee to separate us sinning sinners into one flock.
We're not ready. We're not worthy, and we're certainly not in His Ways wise.
Instead, I think we're in for quite a surprise, when He shows each and everyone of us our selves as seen through His Eyes.
I read about such an event coming up "soon".
“You are addressing that tagline insult to ealgeone as much as you are to everyone else.”
It’s not directed to everyone and I don’t mind if everyone takes it as directed to them.
“And ealgeone is correctly saying that you attempted to justify it through Scripture but haven’t done so.”
No, actually he is in error. I made no attempt. There was only accomplishment.
“What’s more, you’ve not only made your tagline a personal attack on everyone who reads it,”
That’s false.
“but you’re breaking the rules by calling an individual poster an “anti-Catholic.””
If there is a rule against calling an anti-Catholic an anti-Catholic, then I have, in fact, violated it without intentionally doing so. Feel free to alert the religion forum moderator.
You’re a legend in your own mind.
There is much to be learned by reading on to verse 10:
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
What is noteworthy upon reflection is how verse 10 clarifies the two preceding verses. When it is included in proper context, we see that works are not antithetical to faith, but rather, the necessary “outworking” of it. In verse 8 and 9, St. Paul is stressing the ‘first cause’ of grace and faith, and the futility of mere human works not preceded by grace.
But in verse 10 he teaches that good works ordained by God, and always proceeding from His grace, are equally part of salvation and justification. The whole passage is more in accord with Catholic both-and thinking than with the Protestant sola perspective.
Disagree with the last part for without faith your good works are nothing but filthy rags.
You can do good works and not be saved.
If you look at how the Greek is in this section it is evident that all of this flows from God. He has made the provision for our salvation. There is nothing we can do to be "good enough" to earn our salvation.
I do agree though, that once a person professes Christ, there is to be fruit produced. I believe that is abundantly clear in the NT.
A believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit. I find no texts in the NT that ever say the believer is unsealed.
When the believer saves saved by faith and faith alone he is not saying, "I believe" and that's it. If you believe what Christ says, you will do what Christ says.
That's Christianity.
“You can do good works and not be saved.”
What part of “both/and” is so hard to understand.
Where have works alone ever been presented as sufficient?
“A believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit. I find no texts in the NT that ever say the believer is unsealed.”
Here’s a few:
James 2:14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
James 2:18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. 20 Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23 Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.
James 2:24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
Furthermore, Salvation is not guaranteed. Scripture says we can lose our salvation and that perseverance is even required to enter heaven.
1 Corinthians 9:27 but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
2 Timothy 2:12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us;
Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
“You’re a legend in your own mind.”
No, I just generally get things correct. It was you who mistakenly said that we have “the original texts to compare our translations to” and then “to clarify” you made what might very well be another mistake by saying “we have the original languages to compare our texts to.”
It is you attempting to use scripture to justify your handle. Your’s is the greater error. Not that you’d ever see or admit that.
Illogic argument. Corruption can just as easily arise in new systems as old. The new systems usually have different forms of corruption
The RCC veered off into error which it has not admitted to...yet.
The catholic is blind to this error though somehow justifying idols of Mary in contradiction of scripture, a priesthood not exhibited in the NT, belief that Jesus is re-sacrificed over and over again in contradiction to scripture, penance, and the list goes on and on.
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